What is actually real in Objective Reality? How do you know? Now, prove it's real!

"The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact." - KURT GÖDEL

"According to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth".

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"Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness." - Alfred Korzybski

"Science is a search for basic truths about the Universe, a search which develops statements that appear to describe how the Universe works, but which are subject to correction, revision, adjustment, or even outright rejection, upon the presentation of better or conflicting evidence." - James Randi

"Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch." - Novalis

"Nullius in verba. Take no one's word for it." - Motto of the Royal Society

"I'm trying to find out NOT how Nature could be, but how Nature IS." - Richard Feynman

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." - Thomas Henry Huxley

“A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.” Albert Einstein

"Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism - and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency." - Stephen Jay Gould

"Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work." - James Randi

Archive for the ‘Making a REAL Positive Difference in the World’ Category

“The story of Pierre Jaquet Droz and his sons is one of the most moving in the history of Horology. Born in 1721, Pierre Jaquet Droz, master of time in the Age of Enlightenment — mechanical genius, avant-garde creator of jewellery watchmaking and composer of poetry and dreams — is one of the most fascinating figures of the period.Read the rest of this entry »

The state hypothesis argues that granting the state certain powers and authorities that no other entity has is the optimal solution to the problem of peaceful human interaction, cooperation and collaboration. Of course, there are many variations on the theme: Absolute monarchs, direct democracies, and modernly Constitutional republics, to name just the most common.

The principle argument for the state hypothesis is that human beings tend to mistreat each other, and so the state is necessary in order to protect the rights of all from the deprivations and abuses of the few.

But who will guard the guards themselves? Humans do not cease to have a tendency to mistreat others simply because they become employees (or leaders) of the state. That is the central paradox of establishing a state with a monopoly on the authority to operate as a government.

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” ~ James Madison

The United States was founded by those who believed that a Constitutional republic might be the optimal form of a state, and that a Constitutional republic with limited powers might be a good solution to the problem of how to keep the state from becoming the very thing that it is intended to prevent from coming into existence, namely, a tyrannical violator of individual rights that no one has sufficient power to oppose:

“The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.” -Thomas Jefferson

But the state hypothesis has a fundamental flaw that categorically prevents it from being true: It’s based on multiple logical contradictions.

On behalf of our organization’s more than 16,000 members nationwide, and representing millions of atheists and agnostics, I am writing to protest your inflammatory and slanderous hate speech against nonbelievers, specifically your advice that no Christian should marry an atheist. During a program aired last year on the Christian Broadcast Network that has been recently rebroadcast, a woman with an atheist fiancé asked, “How do you think we can interact with each other peacefully when it comes to spiritual matters?” You responded unpeaceably:

I’m sure this is a nice guy, and you like him a lot, but the bible says, “What fellowship hath Christ with Belial?” There is no fellowship between an atheist and somebody who is a believer in God. . . . I hate to tell you, you’ve got to go find somebody else. . . . I mean, he’s gonna be serving the Devil and you’re gonna be serving God. It’s just that simple.

That remark is a blanket prejudicial smear against the character of all nonbelievers. If you had said the same thing about other minority groups — such as the recent controversy caused by Laura Schlessinger’s thoughtless use of the N-word on her show, suggesting to a caller that she should not have married “outside your race” — the country would be demanding your resignation, asking affiliates to cancel your show and calling on viewers to boycott your extremist, intolerant program. If you had told the woman to break up with a Jewish fiancé because Jews are “reprobate, dissolute and uncouth” (which is what “Belial” means), you would be properly branded an anti-Semite. If you had told her to dump her African-American fiancé because blacks are “worthless and useless” (which is also what “Belial” means), you would be quickly exposed as a racist. Likewise, labeling the entire class of nonbelievers as “demonic and evil,” and as the Devil itself (the meaning of “Belial” in the verse you misquoted), is equally abhorrent.Read the rest of this entry »

The real climate “deniers” are those that say the science is settled when it’s notl

The real climate “deniers” are those that deny the problems with the wild claims alleged.

The real climate deniers are those that allege the AGW hypothesis based upon flawed statistical pseudo-science.

The real climate deniers are those that deny that at the heart of the scientific method is criticism that can falsify the alleged hypotheses put forward by supporters of a hypothesis.Read the rest of this entry »